Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I have had helpful discussions with Professor Katona, the medical director of the Helen Bamber Foundation, an organisation working with survivors of trafficking, torture and other extreme human cruelty. Like me, he worked in the NHS for many years as a consultant psychiatrist. The foundation is very concerned about the impact the Bill could have on the mental health of survivors—particularly those who have experienced trauma—and that it could deny them the protection and support they need. I agree with its concern that the Bill will effectively punish and retraumatise asylum seekers and survivors of human trafficking for behaviour and actions that are inextricably linked to the human rights violations and trauma they have already experienced.

Asylum seekers who have come to the UK by what are termed “illegal” means—such as by small boat across the channel—will be given less protection. Even when their asylum claims are successful, they will still be disadvantaged, despite bravely taking the only means available to them to reach safety. I am unclear whether there are any legal routes available so, before I say more, I ask the Minister to explain in her conclusion exactly what legal means there are and how such routes could be made clearer to people seeking asylum and to protect them when they are the victims of people smugglers and traffickers. How can it be humane to grant people recognised as entitled to refugee status only a temporary form of status simply because of their means of arrival? How can it be fair to restrict their rights to both family reunification and financial support? The loss of hope caused by these actions plus leaving such asylum seekers in a state of limbo and permanent fear of return, unable to rebuild their lives, can only add to their mental distress and will build up problems for all our futures. This is manifestly cruel, particularly in the apparent lack of legal means of arrival.

With respect to the proposal that accommodation centres be used to house those seeking asylum, a review of the evidence by the Helen Bamber Foundation shows that accommodation of this kind has similar adverse effects on mental health to those associated with immigration detention. Offshoring can be expected to have similar, but even worse, effects on mental health to those associated with accommodation centres in the United Kingdom. Evidence from Australia’s use of offshoring has shown how it results in severe harm to people’s physical and mental health. More fundamentally, it would result in major limitations on the human rights of the individuals concerned and would give them little or no chance of subsequent transfer to the UK, even if their asylum claims were successful.

On the idea of so-called late evidence and late claims being treated as lacking in credibility or unmeritorious, this ignores the substantial evidence that trauma and other mental health problems make it emotionally very difficult, if not impossible, for survivors of human rights violations—particularly those whose trauma has a sexual component—to disclose fully what has happened to them unless they are given sufficient time and support to facilitate such disclosure. This is so well evidenced for victims of trafficking and of torture. The assessments provided in reception centres already pay scant attention to the mental health of new arrivals, and staff are unlikely—to be polite—to have the skills or time to enable disclosures. Just the retelling of trauma is retraumatising—I know that from my personal experience. Disclosures of abuse and torture require a relationship of trust and the possibility of sensitive and sustained psychotherapeutic help. To give a parallel example, the average time from abuse to disclosure for survivors of child sexual abuse in one inquiry was 35 years.

I do not expect the Bill’s drafters to have been fully aware of the complexity of the mental health risks faced by asylum seekers, but I seek an assurance from the Minister that the impact of some of the Bill’s provisions on the mental health of asylum seekers will be thought about again and the Bill amended accordingly.